Following the Instructions, Following Jesus: Sermon for Ascension Sunday B

We are in the midst of a season of transitions. We've had some several changes in our own parish in the last few months: beloved parishioners whose health required them to move closer to relatives; others who have had hospital or rehabilitation stays; parishioners who have passed away. I will preside over my uncle’s burial tomorrow, and this summer we will lay my brother to rest. Yet there are also wonderful transitions happening all around us. We also have new members who have come to join us, as well, or who are seeking baptism, and we are blessed by their presence and their commitment to walking the path of faith alongside us.

For those of you who are students, or who have children or grandchildren who are students, there's prom, which my sister helped supervise at her school district last night, and I hope she is soundly asleep right now. And after prom, of course there are graduations. My dear friend Pamela's daughter Annabel graduated last week with her juris doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, and I look forward to seeing how she will use her knowledge of the law to make the world a better place, for I am certain that that is her intention. There are high school students preparing in a few short weeks to head off to college, and college students who are preparing to come home for the summer.

And thus, we also face some practicalities: the taking apart and putting together of dorm rooms and apartments and living spaces. So I have a question: Who here among us has ever attempted to put together a piece of furniture from IKEA, or from any foreign country in which the instruction manual, if you have one at all, reads as if it was written by a Martian?

I asked this because our daughter Lauren recently regifted us with an IKEA bed that we had originally bought for her when she was living in Chicago. She gave us this bed about a month ago. It may surprise none of you to know that this bed is still sitting in pieces in one of our spare bedrooms. Why is it in pieces, you might ask? Because even though we made sure that we had every piece that we needed for the bed’s structural integrity, we forgot about the special tools, and we forgot about the instructions. And since it has been years since we last put that bed together, we no longer have the memory of how we did it the first, second and third times we assembled it.

We've got all the pieces we need, but it is possible we may spend the rest of our lives trying to put this bed together. And every time I walk past the open door of that bedroom and see that bed in pieces, it occurs to me that it is the perfect metaphor for our lives as disciples, made especially more poignant on this Ascension Sunday.

In our readings today we hear Luke's two accounts of Jesus bodily ascension into heaven. Now, unfortunately, we get them in reverse chronological order. As you may know, the author of Luke wrote both he gospel, and then a sequel: the Acts of the Apostles. Both of these documents were addressed to a person Luke called “Theophilus,”-- which is a symbolic name that literally means “Lover of God.” So both of these writings are addressed to us.

With a strict economy of words, Luke's gospel account ends with reminding us that Jesus, one last time, explained all the scriptures to his followers, and then took his disciples to Bethany, a town two miles outside of the gates of Jerusalem, said farewell, and ascended into heaven. In the gospel account, they respond to this shocking event with great joy, worship, and witness in the Temple.

Apparently, Luke was dissatisfied with this terse description, for he begins his sequel with that same event, but in more detail. The account in Acts specifies that Jesus’ post-Resurrection sojourn among his friends lasted 40 days, 40 always being a significant number of periods of learning and transition in scripture. We also hear Jesus’s instructions not to leave Jerusalem just yet, and actually informing us, his readers, about political questions the disciples had for Jesus. Then Jesus ascends on a cloud, while his friends and followers stood there gaping and staring up at the sky for so long that God finally had to send two angels to nudge them out of their shock. Our reading closes with the implication that the angels are telling them to get to work.

With that, the incarnation of Jesus in human flesh is complete here on Earth. Yet Jesus’s bodily ascension into heaven is a pivotal point, because he continues as both human and divine, seated at the right hand of God. In ascending, Jesus brings his embodiment into the community of the Trinity. Human experience, human joy, human suffering, now enter into the very existence of God. When Jesus intercedes with us when we pray, for instance, he does so as the Son of God and the Son of Man.

But Jesus’s ascension is also a huge turning point in the lives of those who are disciples of Jesus, who call themselves followers of Jesus, for those who were yet living to witness it and those of us in the centuries since who have only second-hand accounts like the reading from the Book of Acts to go by. What does the Ascension mean for us today, symbolically and practically? And that leads us to the heart of the matter for us to consider yet again: why was it necessary for the Son of God to become incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth in the first place?

Over the first few years, when people expected Jesus back at any moment, the answer was very particular and specific. Jesus came to take our sinful nature upon himself in a transaction: Jesus removed our sins supposedly so that we could go to heaven when we die—heaven, where, Jesus reminds us in a gospel passage commonly read at funerals, God’s mansion has many swelling places and Jesus goes to prepare a place for us. And that was fine—when, like children, Jesus’s followers depended upon Jesus as their teacher and their savior to do everything for them.

Yet even during Jesus’s earthly ministry, he repeatedly insisted that his presence among us was NOT merely transactional. In fact he came to demonstrate to his followers that God’s love for us and for creation is NOT a transaction, that god was NOT keeping a great big ledger book ticking off every unkind thought that entered our heads. One of the greatest concepts Jesus emphasized was that we can’t earn our way into salvation. The insistence that grace, not merit, brings us within the embrace of God was a core teaching of Jesus—one that unfortunately gets drowned out too much in the loudest parts of Christendom, where depictions of hellfire and brimstone are excellent ways to distract us from the WORK we as disciples are called to do right here on Earth.

Jesus ascends bodily into heaven because HIS specific work here was finished. That may shock us—how can it be, with all the wars, and disease, and suffering, and genocides, that Jesus’s work on Earth is done?

The answer is simple: because Jesus’s work was NEVER just transactional. Jesus’s work was transformative, and relational. ALWAYS. And the transformation he most centered on was with US. To teach us how to LIVE, and live with each other. Not how to continue on in the ways of the world turning a blind eye to the need around us. The transformation Jesus calls us to continue as his followers is now, because eternal life is NOW.

The heart of Jesus’s ministry on earth was not to teach us how to die, but how to live. Specifically, Jesus’s own life among us was meant to show us how to live a God-centered life—and most of the time, that didn’t simply mean spending time in worship—in fact, during his life Jesus dissuaded his followers from worshiping him. Instead, he called his disciples to FOLLOW him—to emulate him as they could. Jesus insisted that a faithful life was not about separating people into camps of the worthy and the unworthy, sinners, and saints, but to go out and DO as Jesus did in the world to the best of our ability. To both embody Christ’s love and compassion in ourselves, and to see Christ’s face in others. Jesus gives us both the proper tools, and the complete instructions.

The fact that much of the world claims not to see that same love and presence is an indication that we, as Jesus’s followers and witnesses, need to take Jesus’s instructions to us more seriously. The instruction manual has been right there all along. It’s up to us now. But luckily Jesus is still with us, for he is still a Risen, living Savior, calling us to keep learning, to keep growing, to keep being symbols of hope and reconciliation contrary to the tug and pull of human systems based on oppression, exploitation, and callousness that washes over our modern societies in all their structures. The instructions are simple: to oppose systems and leaders who build their power and influence on oppression, dishonesty and contempt, and instead embody God’s love for the life and hope of a better world.

The Ascension reminds us that Jesus’s instructions were quite clear, and that Jesus’s Ascension has real significance for us as disciples. Those instructions, as we were reminded last week, were, are, and aways shall be based on one commandment: LOVE. Not as an emotion, but as an action and a way of life, not just for those we know but for those we don’t know, not just for those WE decide are worthy but for everyone, especially those we would like to turn our backs upon. Turning our backs on people or on the care of the world is NOT God’s way—it is exactly the kind of thing Jesus repeatedly told us to STOP doing.

The Ascension removes our training wheels and anoints us to continue Jesus’s work of reconciliation and healing in the world, of witnessing physically in all we do to the goodness and love of God. Jesus has given us all the knowledge we need, and modelled for us a concrete example of what a God-centered life, a fully human life, entails. That life is 99% witness and living and loving as Jesus did, which is the hard but oh so rewarding and transformative part of a Christian life. Worship, as important as it is, means nothing if it does not energize and empower us to build our lives around Jesus’s instructions.

Christ has risen, and has ascended! Alleluia! Now we get to follow the instructions and BE Christ for the sake of the world and for the sake of living lives of wonder, purpose, and transformation. Thanks be to God!

Readings:

Acts 1:1-11 

Psalm 47

Ephesians 1:15-23

Luke 24:44-53

Preached at the 505 and the 10:30 am main service of Holy Eucharist, May 11-12, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Created for Wonder: Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension (transferred)

There are a variety of images of the Ascension that have been visualized by artists throughout the centuries, and they range from straightforward illustrations from one of the readings we just heard, to the somewhat weird and then to the sublime. 

Icons are usually pretty straightforward: Disciples gathered around, Jesus rising to heaven, maybe a rainbow breaks out. Weird ones show just Jesus’s feet dangling in the top center of the picture, focusing on the comically awe-struck faces of the disciples. But the sublime ones express the mystery that is at the heart of the Ascension in a way that promoted thought and wonder.

One of my favorite images of the ascension of Christ is one by Salvador Dali, painted in 1958. It’s actually called Ascension: Pieta. This is not one of his stranger paintings with crutches and melted watches, or impossibly spindly, toothpick-legged horses or robotic humanoid figures.

This one is hyper-realistic. Christ is depicted floating directly over the viewer’s head, so you see bare feet, thighs, ribcage expanded like a diver getting ready to plunge, arms outstretched, hands powerfully flexed, straining and grasping at the air. Jesus’s chin is pointed skyward. The feet are smudged; Jesus’s time walking with the disciples is over.

But this diver is plunging upward, upward into the center of perhaps the nucleus of a cell, but more probably the center of an atom. See, this painting was inspired by a dream he’d had years before, soon after mankind first began creating atomic weapons. Dali depicts Jesus entering the nucleus of the atom, literally becoming one with all, part of the building block of the universe, which is actually a beautiful way of thinking about God using a scientific metaphor. Dali’s Christ turns thus bodily transforms a figure of destruction into a hope for new creation and unity. 

The "pieta" part of Dali's vision shows Dali’s wife Gala posing as the Jesus’s mother Mary, looking down on the world, weeping; knowing how her son has suffered and continues to struggle against the evil in the world. Yet even here the risen Christ, on his way to heaven, acts to unify with what we have used all our vanity and skill to break apart, offering to bring peace where we have unleashed destruction. Dali uses the Ascension to insist on the inherent unity of faith with science, and of Creator and creation, with Christ as the mediator.

Given that the Feast of the Ascension is about Jesus leaving his disciples and ascending to heaven, one might wonder, first of all, how this is something that should be celebrated, and whether anyone in their right minds can actually believe it happened at all. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen sarcastic pictures of Jesus dressed like an astronaut noting that, unless he obtained warp speed, even after 2,000 years he would still be zooming through the space in the Milky Way, our own galaxy.

The meaning and truth of the Ascension, or any biblical account, does not depend upon whether writers 2,000 years ago could describe what they experienced and witnessed with scientific precision. The Bible was never meant to be a scientific text—nor was it ever meant to be used to oppose or contradict science, reason, or knowledge. Whether in theology or in literature, great stories can expose deep truths about ourselves and our world even using fictional events and characters. The beauty of the Anglican strand of Christianity is that most of us are quite willing to imaginatively engage with both science and faith, and see them as complementary.

For instance, we no longer believe in a three-layered cosmos, with the Earth surrounded by waters and held up by pillars. And hopefully most of us have abandoned the idea that the Earth is flat too. Hopefully! 

We now know our galaxy alone has 50 galaxies within it, with maybe as many as 100 billion stars, most with their own systems, and that there are possibly 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. That we know of right now. Where “heaven” is in relationship to all that is not a fruitful line of inquiry for most of us.

But that doesn’t mean that the Ascension is untrue. It is true in what it expresses—that Jesus lives, and is available to all of us and seeks out relationship with all of us that we may change the world. While in his earthly ministry, as a human he accepted certain limitations. He couldn’t be in two places at once, for instance, and so his ministry was limited to a small part of the world. Even in his resurrected body, he was still limited to this constraint until his ascent.

It's funny—we supposedly live in a scientific age, but most people’s actual knowledge of science, mine included, is not that great. Yet we use the tools of science to assault anything that threatens our own assumptions. We are now at the point when people simply block themselves off from information they don’t like—a perversion of not just the so called scientific revolution, but the tactic of tyrants and despots throughout history.

Yet God created us for wonder. And that’s part of what faith is all about.

So what might we take from the Ascension that would have meaning in our own lives? There’s enough there for a book (or many). It is about the uniting of creation with God, the completion of the unification of human with deity that began with Jesus’s entry into the world and continues after his return to God. It is the same mystery we celebrate every time we prayer together the Eucharistic prayer and unite ourselves with the ongoing heavenly banquet before God’s throne.

The Ascension is a mystery.

WHAT heaven is, and the kingdom of God is, is what Jesus came to us to reveal— and, as our scriptures today remind us for us then to reveal to the world. And he was clear that it was not a place as a state of existence beyond life and death. He was clear that it IS a state of existence that we could and do participate in, seeking it, working for it, NOW.

Heaven, the kingdom of God, is now—where peace, justice, equality, communion, compassion, generosity, abundance, grace, sacrifice, the common good, empathy—otherwise known as love in action-- reign. And we are called to help exemplify that and build that with our voices, our actions, our advocacy, our time, our choices, and our very lives.

And where Hell is now, where violence, injustice, oppression, hatred, contempt, deprivation, want, fear, selfishness, destruction, and cruelty—otherwise known as evil and sin, from individual to systemic-- reign. And we are called to resist that not just with “thoughts and prayers,” but with our voices, our actions, and our advocacy, our time, our choices, and our very lives.

That’s where Jesus’s Ascension comes in. The Ascension is the fulfillment of the Incarnation. In Jesus’s birth, God entered time and history. In the Resurrection, Jesus defeats death. In the Ascension, humanity is taken into the Godhead, for the Incarnate One sits at the right hand of God in his humanity and well as his divinity. Creation becomes one with Creator.

Jesus returns to God, the first resurrected one, completing the work in incarnation, in which humanity and creation become physically, truly one with God. Through Christ we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to witness to the Good News of God’s dream for us. Through Jesus’s Ascension, he is no longer rooted to any one place but becomes available to all as a living, loving presence in each of our lives. Through Jesus’s Ascension, the focus of Jesus’s followers moves from “What must we do to be saved?” to “What can we do to serve God and each other?” Inward to outward. From Jerusalem throughout the world.

Jesus’s leave-taking as necessary for us to continue to grow toward spiritual adulthood and fuller discipleship. Jesus promises he will NOT leave us orphaned, as we heard in our gospel reading last weekend; but he also commissions us to carry on his work in the world as both individual disciples and as a community known as the Church. Jesus honors us by placing the task of witnessing to him and his gospel in our hands.

We are not called by Jesus to stand looking up. We are called by Jesus to look around. To look around, to see the wounds of the world, wounds human hands have inflicted all too often and human silences have made worse. We are then called to look within, to look within our hearts and to the very atoms of our bodies and all creation, where Christ longs to dwell. To look within, and then around again, and see the wonder of the intricacies of creation, signposts of God’s love that is also embedded into the very atoms of this world.

The great 20th century poet and songwriter Bob Dylan underwent a religious conversion in the 1980s, and became a Christian. He wrote a song that combines this acknowledgement of the sinfulness and the beauty that is woven through our existence. It’s called "Every Grain of Sand:"

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment, I can see the master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
And the sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey, I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintery light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, at times it's only me
I'm hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.(1)


Yes, we can see the heartbreak of this world. But we can also see the wonder. Then go, empowered by love, and BE Christ’s own hands and heart to heal and reconcile. Because we know we are not alone.

The point is, we are not supposed to just stand there as Jesus ascends, gazing up at heaven, waiting for God to “do something.” We are commissioned to go do something—lots of things—ourselves in ministry to the world. We can do this because we know that God, Trinity and Unity all at once, is still with us within us, in every bone and sinew and atom, challenging us, inspiring us, urging us to practice resurrection in every thing we do.

Today, we celebrate the risen and ascended Christ, risen to his glorification so that he can intercede for ALL of us, risen, but never gone, never leaving us alone. And we can look around this creation that God tenderly created and continues to love and treasure, and be filled with wonder and awe. And then joyfully, filled with wonder, to take up Jesus’s call to witness, to reconcile, to heal, with every blessed, sacred atom of our beings.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on May 20, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 am Holy Eucharists at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Acts 1:1-11 

Psalm 93

Ephesians 1:15-23

Luke 24:44-53

Citations:

1) Bob Dylan, "Every Grain of Sand," from the album Shot of Love, 1981.

Blessing Beyond Boundaries: Speaking to the Soul May 18, 2023

The rogation procession begins at the parish door, 

in ages past a lion leading the way,
priest and people tracing and beating the parish bounds,
icons aloft, each footfall a proclamation of hope and gratitude–
saints old and new, invoking and being invoked,
that our labor may ever serve each other
and you, Lord Christ, as you ascend.

Creator God,
who laid the foundations of the earth,
and filled the sky with light both by day and by night,
we ask that you bless us this day.

New life springs up from freshly turned soil,
each furrow tracing the hills studiously,
gratefully drinking in the spring rains
like a child at breast.

Bless the fields, our holy ground and succor,
that they may thrum with the song of the diligent bees,
who help make our harvests bountiful,
orchard blossoms releasing a redolent sweetness,
scenting the air with hope.

Bless the skies, dappled with dawn,
that they may bring forth sunshine and rain in good measure,
sustaining the tender plants as they burgeon and bud,
sun gazing benevolently, enticing seed to sprout,
clouds and wind reviving the sleepy dance of ripening grain.

Bless our common toil, our labor and industry,
as we offer our strength and skill
for the sustenance of your people,
that we may minister and midwife
your renewal of the gravid, engraced earth,
that the gifts yielded to us may bless one and all,
even to the communion we share,
offering and gift,
born of earth, hearth, and Spirit.

Ever enclose us within your bounds, O God,
and call us safely into your fold and embrace,
that we may flower and bloom anew
awash in wonder, sustained by goodness.
in kinship and in kindness to your glory
clothing the earth anew.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 18, 2023.

Image:  Jules Breton - La Bénédiction des blés en Artois, 1857

Looking Within: Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension C (7th Sunday after Easter, tr.)

This week, I don’t know about you, but I have been thinking a lot about good-byes.

I have thought about this being Memorial Day, the day we give thanks for and honor those who have laid down their lives in defense of this country in our armed services, our Coast Guard, and our Merchant Marine; those who have been willing to give up their lives to protect others, which is particularly poignant this week. I've thought about their departures from their families to defend our country and other countries, and for their families' farewells to them after giving their lives for others.

I have thought about the feeling you get as you are getting ready to be parted from a loved one—maybe for a few days or weeks, or maybe longer. It’s the time of year for it, isn’t it? It’s graduation season-- a time when we acknowledge achievements but also the huge changes those accomplishments place upon our horizons, with some of our graduates getting ready to move to college or into careers that may take them far from us.

In our house, there have been lots of changes, just like in many of yours. Our son is getting ready to start his career next week, and he is getting ready to go back to Kansas to get ready for that today. Our middle daughter moved to Florida this spring for a new job. Our eldest changed jobs but thankfully is still here living in town.

It’s a time of vacations and journeys—as I have been enjoying my friend Maria’s travels of the Camino de Santiago in Portugal and Spain for these last several weeks, and thinking about how sometimes the journey IS the education rather than just a means of getting TO an education. I have been getting ready for my second summer at Sewanee for the month of June, and so getting ready to keep things running smoothly around here and so thankful for everyone who is helping me to do that.

I have been thinking about the way that these transitions and departures change us. Watching friends I love move to different places, and hoping that our friendships will still endure across distances and the lack of daily presence, hoping that we will still be able to maintain the depth of connection when the whir and demands of life might make it easy to move our friendship more to the periphery, regardless of all the ways technology can keep us connected. Even when friends leave after a visit, the bittersweet feeling of parting.

Our relationships shape us, for good or for ill, and even the difficult relationships have much to teach us, and with God’s help, offer us a chance to practice grace—this much I have learned in my years on this Earth.

Our relationships change and grow throughout the time we have them. Some are fleeting. Some endure, like our relationships with friends and spouses and parents and siblings and cousins. There are great songs about this tender subject, like the Finn Brothers’ “Disembodied Voices,” where they remember talking to each other up and down the hall from their separate bedrooms at night as boys, or the song “Won’t Give In,” where lead singer-songwriter Neil Finn imagines a best man speech in which he talks about the promises we make to those we love to hold fast to “the people we call our own.” 

In her song, “Only a Dream,” the beautifully gifted singer-songwriter Mary-Chapin Carpenter remembered growing up with her elder sister and how she protected and comforted her even during their parents’ unhappy marriage, assuring her in the night that the things that scared her were “only a dream.” In the final verse, she remembers the day her sister left for college:

The day you left home you got an early start
I watched your car back out in the dark
I opened the door to your room down the hall
I turned on the light
And all that I saw
Was a bed and a desk and couple of tacks
No sign of someone who expects to be back
It must have been one hell of a suitcase you packed.

Twirl me about, twirl me around
Let me grow dizzy and fall to the ground
And when I look up at you looking down
Say it was only a dream.(1)

How often have we too stood staring sadly after the beloved ones as they drove around a corner, taillights and turn signal a final blaze goodbye; or watched their suitcase disappear around the corner of the jetway (before we had to say our goodbyes at the security gate); or settled the teen into the dorm room and almost started a fight just to make the leaving easier?

We accept that children from the moment of birth will continue to draw away and recede from us—even eventually recognize the good in that, remembering our own declaration of independence from parental hovering years ago.

I think about that as I hear these stories today about Jesus’s ascension. I think about how traumatized the apostles must have been over the whirl of the past forty days—they had watched their teacher be arrested, crucified, and buried—only to have him return to them after three days, resurrected. Of how they must have rejoiced at having their beloved friend back. But now here he is leaving again—and yet assuring them he will always be with them.

Is it any wonder they stand, gazing up at the sky, afraid to break the connection and tear their eyes and hearts away when all that means is that now, they truly do not know the way forward through their loss? We’ve all done the same. Change is hard, especially changes to the relationships that define us and protect us.

Biblical scholars believe that the same person who wrote the Gospel we call Luke also wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. So it is interesting that today, as we celebrate Jesus’s Ascension, we have as our gospel the closing verses of Luke and the opening verses of Acts—and that they both recount the same event. Luke’s gospel closes with Jesus opening the apostles’ minds to the meaning and fulfillment of the scriptures, his final blessing upon them, and, in the midst of that blessing, his ascension to heaven.

We then hear Acts begin with the same event—but with some different details. The one that jumps out at me is the two angels appearing after Jesus has ascended. They bring the apostles back to earth, so to speak, with a forthright question: “Why are you standing around, staring up at heaven?”

Jesus promises the apostles the power of the Holy Spirit, and then he ascends into heaven, and that’s often where we get distracted. Right there with the apostles, we tend to focus on the image of Jesus flying up into heaven rather than think about what that leave-taking means.

It’s a scene that has been depicted in art thousands of times over the centuries, in icons, and paintings, and reliefs and stained-glass windows. One of the weirdest ways to depict the scene shows only Christ’s feet dangling at the top edge of the scene, as if he were doing an Olympic high dive in the wrong direction.

But even the angels who suddenly appear at that moment remind us that focusing on looking upward is pointless, a hindrance to getting about the holy charge that Christ has placed upon us of witnessing to his truth in the world. It’s an awesome responsibility and an honor. It's a sign of how very much Jesus loves us that’s every bit as breathtaking as his laying down his life for us on the cross. Jesus loves us so much that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he commissions each and every one of his followers to be his ministers and to be his Body, to carry on his holy work of redemption, reconciliation, and healing into the world: to carry him and bear his image within ourselves for the sake of the world. And if we want to be worthy of bearing his name, we have to take up that holy responsibility with steadfastness and hope, with action rather than mere words.

It’s so easy, I know, to look to heaven to solve all of our problems. We will especially hear about people talking about “thoughts and prayers” this week as people of conscience are rocked with grief at another horrific school shooting, this time in Uvalde, Texas, and nineteen precious small children and two teachers murdered with weapons of war in neighborhood school--a place that is supposed to be a sanctuary and place of growth. I have wept as I thought about the goodbyes, the final chance to be with each other, that all those families have experienced—and all the thousands of families who likewise have been parted from their loved ones by the scourge of gun violence, and by our pretended helplessness to do anything about it except claim to look up to heaven and offer “thoughts and prayers.”

And I’ll be honest with you: I wore this orange gun violence stole last week, after the Tops Supermarket shooting in Buffalo and the shooting in Orange County at the Taiwanese church. And here I am again, but this time wearing it for 19 precious children and two teachers who put their bodies on the line, all massacred, and the husband of one of the teachers dead mere hours later from a literal broken heart. Twenty-two dead victims and their dozens of classmates wounded either physically or psychologically, and their families, and their town. I would give ANYTHING to not have to wear this stole and to have to preach about this. But the gospel demands it. The Christian life is one of engagement with the world in Jesus's name.

Memorial outside Robb Elementary in Uvalde Texas from The Guardian (UK).

Because we’ve been here too many times, watching these terrible losses with hearts breaking and demands for change that fade once the going gets tough and sacrifices are called for. Every single time, we hear people with a financial and partisan interest in the status quo murmur about praying to heaven, and then shrug off any responsibility or any intention to actually work for the common good to help prevent these horrors from being so easy and so common and so horrifying. It’s easy to claim free will when it suits us, but when times like these call for sacrifices for the common good, we can’t simply turn our eyes to heaven and shrug and claim such things are out of our hands. It’s easy—and it’s wrong.

That’s why I hope you think about what the ascension of Jesus means for you and me—whether you literally believe in it or not. I mean, it sound fantastic—Jesus being bodily carried into heaven, when there’s so much here on earth that still needs to be fixed! So we join with the apostles in our grief and cry, “How could he leave us? There’s so much here that still needs to be healed! Why doesn’t God do something?” And Jesus asks us, “There’s so much that needs to be healed! Why don’t they do something?”

The fact is, we are all in the same situation, those apostles 2000 years ago and us, right now. We can realize that Jesus’s ascension places the responsibility for witnessing to the resurrected life Jesus offers to us squarely on OUR shoulders. The responsibility to act is now OURS.

The story told in Acts is meant to build up our courage so that we may joyfully take up the mission he loves us enough to entrust to us: to take up our call not as observers but as disciples; to actively proclaim Jesus’s gospel of love and reconciliation in the world.

It’s about hearing that question directed at us: “Why are you standing there, looking up at heaven?”

This is a question posed in love and in encouragement. With Jesus’s ascension, WE are Christ’s Body in the world. It is up to us to literally embody Jesus’s gospel in our lives, our attitudes, our words, and our actions.

Being a Christian is NOT a spectator sport. Being a Christian calls us to not only transform OUR own lives, but to make visible to the world the possibility of its transformation and restoration. Being a Christian is a social and political act in the very best sense of those words. Politics isn’t a dirty word—it simply means our commitment to the body politic and its well-being. The foundation of politics, just like the foundation of the gospel, is not mere personal advantage but the common good—the same common good Jesus calls us to when he reminds us that the greatest commandment is to love God, and to love each other as much as we love ourselves, NO EXCEPTIONS. Politics is the heart of our lives together in groups big or small-- the commitment and the love we are called to practice and offer to each other and act of hope, bravery, and enduring willingness to see the potential and the beauty within this Earth and within every inhabitant of it. The gospel absolutely is political-- intended for our flourishing as one community of the children of God. It should NEVER be partisan.

As we grow in our relationship with God, we are empowered and loved by God to take up our own ministry in the world. To remember that we are now the face, hands, and healing heart of Jesus out in the world—to remember and to look within ourselves, where Jesus has been all along, and find the courage to tear our eyes away from heaven, to give thanks for the love and grace that God continually shows us, and take up our call to witness to the love that reaches out to the world, this hurting, wounded, beautiful world, through our own discipleship and gratitude for all that God has done for us, in times of joy as well as sorrow, in times of meeting as well as times of parting.

The Ascension of Jesus reminds us: it’s time to look within rather than toward heaven. Look within, and locate the beating heart of God placed inside of us at our birth—given to us not just for ourselves, but for those around us, friend, family, or stranger. And then act, for the good and protection and flourishing of those around us. Why do you stand looking up into heaven? Look within, instead. That’s where Jesus is—all along.

Amen.


Preached at the 505 on Saturday and the 8 and 10:30 am services on Sunday, May 28-29, 2022, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.


Readings:
Acts 1-11
Luke 24:44-53

Citations:

1) Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Only a Dream," from the album Come On, Come On, 1992.

The Essential Church: Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension, year A

One of the things I do to prepare for worship each week is spend the week in conversation with our texts for the following Sunday. Early in the week, I normally begin to look at artwork, listen to music, and read poetry that touches upon the upcoming readings. Over the years I have gathered quite a collection of these items.

One of my favorite, strangest images I have for the Feast of the Ascension is one a friend of mine shared from a shrine on the east coast of England in Norfolk. The backstory to the image is this. In 1061, a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a local nobleman, and a shrine was soon built there, and became a major pilgrimage site in all of Europe. After Henry VIII’s break from Rome, the shrine was demolished, but was later restored when the Anglo-Catholic movement was launched within the Church of England in the 19th century, Anglican veneration of Mary became popular again. In the 1920s, the Anglican priest who oversaw the Anglican parish in the town built an Anglican shrine to Mary and included a chapel devoted to the Ascension of our Lord.

Rather than depict the scene with a painting or a statue, on the ceiling over the altar there is a gilded piece of art that depicts two pierces feet and the hem of a golden robe ascending into the clouds overhead. This depiction is certainly unique. For as often as it makes me laugh, this sculpture also comforts me. It’s a reminder of the fact that Jesus is still with us, even after the Ascension, just not always in a way we might expect. 

It’s a funny thing that the ascension of Jesus gets little descriptive mention in the gospels—and in fact the best description we have is in the Acts of the Apostles, believed to have been written by the same person who wrote Luke’s gospel. As you recall, Luke and Acts work together as a whole, and they are both believed to have been written by the same author, whom we will call Luke. Although Easter lasts 50 days, there is a notable event at day 40—the Ascension of the Lord. It is traditionally observed on a Thursday; this year, that was May 21, even though the celebration of this event is usually moved to the following Sunday as we are doing. Then ten days after that Thursday, next Sunday, we will celebrate Pentecost, which has two overlapping events associated with it as we see in Acts: first, it is the Jewish Festival of Weeks, or Shavuot, a harvest festival, and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples as foretold in our reading today.

After 40 days of explaining to the disciples, of them hearing Jesus constantly reminding them that he is leaving them but comforting them with the promise of the Holy Spirit, the disciples still have questions—kind of like an audience that keeps calling for encores to keep the concert going just a little longer. Jesus has spent an additional 40 days after his resurrection explaining to the disciples what is essential. And once again, the disciples miss, spectacularly, understanding what that means. Just like we do all these years later.

The thing they ask him-- again-- is whether he is going to finally re-establish the independent monarchy to this tiny country groaning under the burden of yet another occupying army. They try to turn Jesus into a partisan hack. Even after all this time, they cannot resist trying to get Jesus to be the warrior king they had been waiting for, asking him to restore the monarchy to Israel. The oppression that Israel has endured throughout most of its history—save for the brief moment of the reigns of David and his son Solomon, frankly—is something they always believed would be ended with the coming of the Messiah.

Yet forgotten within the request for a king is the particularity of the request. When Israel first asked for a king, their prophet warned them that the only king and allegiance they needed was God, and that in choosing a human king, they were choosing to be oppressed by a strong man rather than be led by God into true freedom and equality. Yet they insisted—and it didn’t turn out too well. If you read between the lines, you see that even by Solomon’s reign, for all his supposed glory and wisdom, the people were being deprived of the right to their own labor as the king sought ever grander wars and palaces to showcase his own vanity.

The other problem with making Jesus a national king is that they are still passively waiting for Jesus to do things rather than understand that Jesus is calling them to their work as disciples. Once again, Jesus has to remind them that there is something more important that they will be empowered to do: to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit” and then BUILD the kingdom of God by “being my witnesses… to the ends of the earth”. They are not to wait for God to transform the world. THEY are God’s hands to transform the world. The disciples are given the power. The disciples will have the ability to utilize that power and will need to be willing to take risks to fulfill that commission.

And we are the disciples today, as member of Christ’s body in the world- the Church. As the Church, Christ is with us and we are in Christ, as we were reminded last week in our gospel reading. They are reminded by two angelic figures not to stand around all day gawking but to get to it (a literal paraphrase of v.11). This is our essential nature as the Church. It is our charge and reason for existence. Not worship for our own sakes. But discipleship and action for the sake of the world. 

Jesus’s response to them reminds them that he is the Savior of the entire world, not just for Israel. Disciples of Jesus are called to let go of trying to make a God a tiny, nationalistic God. Instead, they—and we—are called to our own work, making disciples of every nation not through force of arms but through force of faith, hope, charity, and love, bearing witness through the power of being a Spirit-filled people. When Jesus ascends, he breaks free of nationalist expectations. When he ascends, the disciples are then empowered to carry his message to Israel and beyond.

Jesus doesn’t sit at the right hand of God as the representative of one nation. The incarnation is meant to remind us that these human-made boundaries only serve to divide us. It is an important reminder to us, especially on this Memorial Day weekend that aggressions against these human-made boundaries, and the jealousies, oppressions, and tyrannies they encourage, and especially the wars they foster, unfortunately lead to death and destruction.

The Lord of Life is not the property of any one nation or people, but is a universal Savior one who gathers all the nations of the world not through force of arms or conquest but through love, compassion, and wisdom—to an ethos of sharing rather than hoarding. The reign of Israel is restored through Jesus via their gift of the Messiah to the world, but not as a conquering king riding at the head of armies or empires. The kingdom of God is never directed at granting an advantage to any one people or nation. Attempting to make God a national symbol—or worse, setting God lower in our hearts than divisions we make for ourselves in terms of our devotion. As Calvin noted, Jesus reigns over all creation, to overcome both the distance between us and God and between each other.

As the disciples watch Jesus ascending, we see a parallel scene from Easter morning. Then too, in Luke’s retelling, two angels in dazzling white appeared, and asked the disciples gathered why they are looking in the wrong direction for the wrong thing. Jesus is not simply to be gazed at and adored. They are not to stand there dreading his absence, but look amongst each other and see Jesus in each and every face they see—to see Jesus everywhere. Not just among the “good” or the “righteous,” but among the lost, the forsaken, and the fallen as well.

The repeating of this symbolism reminds us of the hope of Easter enduring. Even after Jesus’ embodied time on earth ends, his embodiment continues, uniting us with God as much as we are united with each other, loving as God calls us to love, without barriers of the heart. And in this time of pandemic, the only barriers God calls us to maintain are those of the masks we wear to protect those around us, to the barrier of self-control and love of other that puts limits on our own selfishness and use of others as tools for our own petty wants and desires.

The early disciples had no desire to start an institution like the Church. They wouldn’t have started one, either, if they had continued to stand around, mouths agape, staring up into the glory of heaven revealed as Jesus ascends. And indeed, the early disciples after the ascension were certain that Jesus was going to be back within their lifetimes—you see that hope reflected in the earliest Christian writing we do have from St. Paul. That’s probably why they didn’t bother writing down any of their first-hand accounts of Jesus in any formal way. The four gospel accounts that were selected for the biblical canon, plus the book of Acts written by the same person who wrote what we call Luke’s gospel, were written by necessity as the generation of witnesses passed away.

And even today, we get people who believe that there are things that THEY can do to cause the second coming of Jesus. And yet, the reign of God was inaugurated by Jesus’s coming to earth and taking on human flesh calls for us to cast aside our support for anyone who calls us to do things that would hurt others, even as accidental casualties.

Jesus is not a possession or a talisman. We who claim Jesus as our Savior cannot clasp him only to ourselves as a personal possession any more than we can hold water in our hands. Just like love, we only get more Jesus by sharing his good news and his invitation to wholeness with others.

There’s been a lot of talk about “the Church” in the news, especially this week, as some of our political leaders have been weighing in on whether worship services in person should resume immediately. And so, it got me to thinking about how we were going to conduct worship this week, while I am down here in Tulsa with my family caring for my mom after her stroke last week. I haven’t been able to be outside much, and so I thought this would be a good opportunity to remind ourselves that worship doesn’t only take place in buildings.

And what a blessing that is—even in this time of COVID-19, we are forcefully reminded that we can worship across distances and that without walls, our worship but more importantly our witness is seen by hundreds of people who would not have come through our doors previously.

I steadfastly agree that churches are essential. The most essential way for the church to exist is as people devoted to action, not to see ourselves as walled away in buildings. What’s essential is using the reason and science and wisdom God has implanted within us to have faith enough in God to know that God is wherever we are gathered in love and charity, no matter how we do that.

But this is also a good time to remind ourselves that worship is not the be-all and end-all of the Christian life. I am convinced it is impossible to “close” the Church. We are not called to just stand around looking up to heaven. It’s so alluring, I know, to want to look to heaven to solve all of our problems. Jesus’ ascension is NOT about Jesus abandoning us to go back to heaven. Our readings remind us that God is right here, within us, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The story told in Acts is meant to build up our courage so that we may joyfully take up the mission he loves us enough to entrust to us: to take up our call not as observers but as disciples; to actively proclaim Jesus’s gospel of love and reconciliation in the world.

It’s about hearing that question directed at us: "Why are you standing there, looking up at heaven?" This is a question posed in love and in encouragement. With Jesus’s ascension, WE are Christ’s Body in the world. It is up to us to literally embody Jesus’s gospel in our lives, our attitudes, our words, and our actions. And that means not endangering each other—and the untold people with whom we come in contact with—by ending our fast from in person worship at this time.

Faith that discounts love and concern for others is no faith at all, as we discussed last week. Being a Christian is NOT a spectator sport. Being a Christian calls us to not only transform OUR own lives, but to make visible to the world the possibility of its transformation and restoration. Now more than ever this is so needed. Being a faithful disciple is a social and political act, and act of hope, bravery, and enduring willingness to see the potential and the beauty within this Earth and within every inhabitant of it. That’s the work of the Church. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, it cannot be contained within four walls.

Amen.

Preached from The Gathering Place in Tulsa for the 10:30 am worship from DSt. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on May 24, 2020.

Readings:
Acts 1:1-11 
Psalm 47
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53

Prayer, day 2675: For Ascension Sunday, and the blessing of the earth

Creator God,
who laid the foundations of the earth,
and filled the sky with light both by day and by night,
we ask that you bless us this day.

Bless the fields,
that they may thrum with the song of the diligent bees,
who help make our harvests bountiful.

Bless the skies, dappled with dawn,
that they may bring forth sunshine and rain in good measure,
sustaining the tender plants as they burgeon and bud.

Bless our toil
as we offer it up for the sustenance of your people,
that we may gratefully care for the earth
and for each other.
Enclose us within your bounds, O God,
and call us safely into your fold,
especially those we now name.

Amen.

Prayer 2314: Ascension Day

Blessed Jesus, we praise you
and lift our hearts to be filled by your Spirit.
May we be ever-joyful witnesses of your truth
and embody your wisdom and healing
in the world always.
May we know you as our companion,
our brother, our teacher, our guide,
our Savior who dwells in us, and we in you.

Holy One of Blessing,
God of Mercy and Faithfulness,
sustain us by your grace
and grant strength and comfort
to all those in anxiety or pain,
we humbly pray,
resting in the assurance of your care.

Peace be upon us,
and upon all for who we pray.

Amen.

Called to Witness: Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension, 2019

A German Shepherd, A Collie, and a Siamese cat appeared before God sitting on his throne near the gate of heaven.

“Welcome, my beautiful friends,” said God. “Before I welcome you in, I have a question for each of you so I can know where to place you near my throne.”

The three companions sat down. The dogs’ tails thumped on the ground. The cat began licking its paw and grooming its smoky ears.

God addressed the German Shepherd first. “Tell me, German Shepherd Dog, what do you believe?”

The German Shepherd immediately replied, “Ja--I Believe in Discipline, Training, and in the Protection of my master.”

“You ARE the Good Shepherd—well done,” said God. “You may sit at my left hand.”

Then God turned to the Collie. “Tell me, O Collie, what YOU believe.”

The Collie sat up a little straighter. “Och- I believe in the Love, Comfort, and Loyalty to me Mistress.”

“Excellent, my bonnie lass,’ God responded. “You may sit at my right hand.”

God then turned to the Siamese cat, still grooming its ears with its paw. “And you, O Cat of Siam, tell me—what do you believe?”

“I believe,” the cat said in measured tones, examining its paw carefully, “that YOU are sitting in my seat.”

Today we hear the story of Jesus’s ascension into heaven following his resurrection, where, according to the Nicene Creed, we are told that he sits at the right hand of God. That means that the Collie and the Cat will have to move over.

Biblical scholars believe that the same person who wrote the Gospel we call Luke also wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. So it is interesting that today, as we celebrated Jesus’s Ascension, we have as our gospel the closing verses of Luke and the opening verses of Acts—and that they both recount the same event. Luke’s gospel closes with Jesus opening the apostles’ minds to the meaning and fulfillment of the scriptures, his final blessing upon them, and, in the midst of that blessing, his ascension to heaven.

We then hear Acts begin with the same event—but with some different details. The one that jumps out at me is the two angels appearing after Jesus has ascended. They bring the apostles back to earth, so to speak, with a forthright question: “Why are you standing around, staring up at heaven?”

Jesus promises the apostles the power of the Holy Spirit, and then he ascends into heaven, and that’s often where we get distracted. Right there with the apostles, we tend to focus on the image of Jesus flying up into heaven rather than think about what that leave-taking means. 

Seriously....

It’s a scene that has been depicted in art thousands of times over the centuries, by everyone from Donatello (the sculptor, not the teenage mutant ninja turtle) to Salvador Dali, in icons, and paintings, and reliefs and stained-glass windows. One of the weirdest ways to depict the scene shows only Christ’s feet dangling at the top edge of the scene, as if he were doing an Olympic high dive in the wrong direction.

But even the angels who suddenly appear at that moment remind us that focusing on looking upward is pointless, a hindrance to getting about the holy charge that Christ has placed upon us of witnessing to his truth in the world. It’s an awesome responsibility and an honor. It's a sign of how very much Jesus loves us that’s every bit as breathtaking as his laying down his life for us on the cross. Jesus loves us so much that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he commissions each and every one of his followers to carry on his holy work of redemption, reconciliation, and healing into the world: to carry him and bear his image within ourselves for the sake of the world.

It’s so easy, I know, to look to heaven to solve all of our problems. But there is a reason why the author of Luke tells this story again in Acts, but with this different emphasis. The Gospels are about Jesus’s ministry on Earth. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is about the apostles and disciples taking up their own ministry, which is the birth of the Church. Jesus’s ascension is NOT about Jesus abandoning us to go back to heaven.

The story told in Acts is meant to build up our courage so that we may joyfully take up the mission he loves us enough to entrust to us: to take up our call not as observers but as disciples; to actively proclaim Jesus’s gospel of love and reconciliation in the world.

It’s about hearing that question directed at us: “Why are you standing there, looking up at heaven?”

This is a question posed in love and in encouragement. With Jesus’s ascension, WE are Christ’s Body in the world. It is up to us to literally embody Jesus’s gospel in our lives, our attitudes, our words, and our actions.

Being a Christian is NOT a spectator sport. Being a Christian calls us to not only transform OUR own lives, but to make visible to the world the possibility of its transformation and restoration. Being a Christian is a social and political act, and act of hope, bravery, and enduring willingness to see the potential and the beauty within this Earth and within every inhabitant of it.
 

Jesus’s reminder in Acts that, again, his kingdom is not about worldly power is a vital one. Too often worldly power is about coercion, about oppression of one group for the sake of another—that certainly was true in Jesus’ time. 

Instead, the Kingdom of Christ is about us taking up our work—all of us, lay or ordained, young or old, building the Beloved Community. Christ’s kingdom is about the power of love and reconciliation to draw all the world closer to God. It’s about living into God’s dream of eternal life, beginning right here and now, and about sharing the life and love with everyone. It’s about looking upon the world with the eyes of love—no exceptions.

We are not called just to watch and wonder. We are called to witness, and to love, not bully, as we do it. And it’s at this point that we remember that, in the life of faith, to be a witness is not just to be one who says what they have seen, but one who helps embody the truth they hold so that others can see it too. That’s how faith is handed down, generation through generation—that we, through the lives we live, lives transformed by Christ and his gospel, help others see God’s loving hand still active in their own lives and in the world.

Jesus spoke to the apostles about being witnesses, but speaks to us today too—we worship a risen, living Savior, and the Holy Spirit is seeking to move over us like she moved over the waters of creation, making all things new. We are given the honor of aiding this holy work of renewal and and reconciliation, of forgiveness and compassion.

Jesus speaks to all of us right here: “You will be my witnesses in St. Louis; you will be my witnesses in Missouri; you will be my witnesses in the hearts and the minds of all your neighbors, and to the ends of the earth.”

What if we lived our lives as if we were the only representation of Jesus that others could know?

Because, often, we are.

Jesus’s ascension into heaven is not an end, but a beginning. It enables the true beginning of the Church being called to its mission to BE Christ’s body in the world. The life of Christians is not inwardly focused but outwardly directed, and Jesus loves and honors us enough to entrust this holy work into our hands.

The ascension of Christ into heaven does not mean that Christ is gone, or that Christ is remote, sitting enthroned in heaven and now aloof from our earthly concerns. Christ does not ever cease being incarnate, fully human as well as fully God. Yet his earthly ministry at the Ascension is translated into an act of true faith and trust in us as his followers. As the incarnate Son of God, Jesus reminds us all of the divine image that rests within us, and all that he teaches us is meant to call us into living into the beauty of that image, to remember God’s ongoing acts of creation within us.

The gift of the Ascension is the gift of true discipleship. It’s the gift of living into the image of God planted within us. It’s the gift of Christ placing the yoke squarely upon our shoulders--in proclaiming the life-giving gospel, in healing the sick and the sick-at-heart, in revealing God’s love visibly and tangibly in the world, through who we are and what we do as Christ’s representatives.

As Christians, we can’t spend our lives worrying about where we will sit near God in heaven. Eternal life begins now, and heaven can be beneath our feet if we are willing to take up our tasks as partners and friends of God in the reconciliation and salvation of the world for the sake of the world. We can’t just stand around gazing upward to heaven- we've got things to do.

And we don’t need to, anyway. Christ is right here, within the hearts and spirits of those who seek to do his will in actions and words and attitudes both great and small. By his earthly example, Jesus modeled for us the human embodiment of God's love and mercy that we all can emulate, even to our enemies, to those who set themselves against us.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, at his ascension Jesus empowers us to be a testimony to justice and peace, not passively but actively. Through this precious gospel, Jesus call to us to band together in the name of love, amity, and charity.

Take heart, Beloveds: Jesus, our Shepherd and Savior, is not gone. He abides in us and invites us to abide with him. He calls us to share in his priesthood by proclaiming mercy, reconciliation, and love throughout the world by our words and our deeds, and to serve the oppressed and the outcast for the glory of God. Let us begin.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on May 25, and at the 8:00 and 10:15 Eucharists on May 26, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Acts 1-11
Psalm 93
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53